


Lights

by LORBEERPRINZ



Series: Zine Fics [4]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24198904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: [written for Kith & Kin]It had not been very long since Kurthnaga had inherited the title as Goldoa's king from his late father, drowning him in work and uncertainties. A visit at his sister's chambers gives him the break he so urgently needs while laying the groundwork for a new Goldoan family tradition.
Series: Zine Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643614
Kudos: 7





	Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here I am, finally writing something focusing on my good boy Kurthnaga :> I love him quite a whole lot, but I was never really sure how or what I should write for him, but when the free Kith & Kin zine came around, I let myself be inspired to this small fic of family feelings (sorry for the alliterations haha). Maybe at some point I will also write something more... intense, for a lack of a better term, but for now, I offer this. Writing it was really relaxing and I hope this relaxing feeling also comes across in the fic, haha.  
> (Hey FE Heroes... when will you finally introduce my boy... please... I'm dying over here...)

It was a strange view at first. Kurthnaga entered his sister’s chambers after he had not seen her at all for the day, only to be greeted by the picture of Almedha surrounded by waves and waves of small, white figures. The princess did not even seem to notice her younger brother at first, solemnly sat at her desk hunched over more paper, humming a simple melody.  
Kurthnaga was unsure to be worried or not.  
Almedha had followed him back to their Goldoan home after Ashera’s judgement had been overcome and the world had been restored to its former self. The revelation that her beloved Pelleas had turned out to be not her actual lost child had worn heavy on her, Kurthnaga knew, and in almost the same breath finding out that her son had been walking around under everyone’s noses the entire time had been shocking yet relieving.

The experience had made her stronger, Almedha claimed. Seeing that the child she had worried about, longed for for more than twenty years, had grown to become as strong as he was had been most relieving. Seeing how the people around him cared for him made her hopeful for his future. She knew she had no place in his life, but he was in good hands.  
And with this hope in her heart she had accompanied Kurthnaga back to Goldoa. He had been surprised how much strength she had managed to muster despite everything she had gone through, and he was most grateful for it.

In the first few weeks, Kurthnaga had been so overwhelmed by his new responsibilities that he’d felt he would break under the weight of them.  
Of course he had had some knowledge of what would await him beforehand  – his father had started to initiate him on his ways as a king after his siblings had both left the country and found awful fates. But in Kurthnaga’s mind at the time, Dheginsea’s rule would last for at least a few centuries more.

And then suddenly he was gone.

And so, Kurthnaga found himself within the circle of Tellius’ kings and queens all of a sudden, at a time he was just beginning to learn more of the world outside of Goldoa’s borders.  
But Almedha was there for him, offering support and feedback. Sometimes she informed him about what politics she had learned at the sides of the previous two kings of Daein. Sometimes she simply listened to the worries he could entrust no one else with.  
Over a short period of time, the formerly rebellious dragon princess had turned into an irreplaceable confidant and advisor for the young king.  
Without her, he would be lost for sure.  
But Kurthnaga also knew she needed a lot of time to herself, and while he didn’t know what she was doing  – reflecting, relaxing, dreaming or something entirely different  – he had no intention of not giving his sister any freedom she needed. He wasn’t going to lose her again.

After all, with the early death of Dheginsea’s wife, Almedha had been more of a motherly figure for him than the queen had ever been able to. He could hardly remember their mother at all.

Almost naturally, the young ruler had been worrying a little bit after he had not seen his sister for the most part of the previous day and she hadn’t joined him for breakfast either as she usually did. And so he had slipped out of his royal duties for a moment to look for her, only to find her swimming in an ocean of paper figures.  
He had absolutely no idea what this display was supposed to mean.

“Almedha… Good… morning?”

She finally reacted, stopped to look up from her desk, surprised to see her brother. The candle next to her was almost burnt to a stump.   
“Oh, Kurth! What do you mean, ‘Good morning’... Oh, by the heavens, is it really morning?”  
Her gaze softened, returned to the paper between her fingers as she let her thumb run over it. It didn’t sound like regular paper to Kurthnaga, had a bit of a rougher, parchment-like quality to it from what he could tell.

A little sigh.  
“Time really flies when you’re busy like that, huh… it’s a far cry from all those years in Daein, I must say.”

Once again Kurthnaga’s gaze fell on the paper figures strewn around the room. He tried to count them, found there were at least thirty of them, possibly even more. Has she been folding them for the entire past twenty-four hours?  
They had a familiar look to them, the faint smell of old and new paper in the air was just as known to him. They brought back memories of times past, painful moments and uncertain periods of loneliness.  
As Almedha finally looked up again and her eyes locked with her little brother, she gave him a tiny smile.

“I found a book the other day, you see. An old legend was in there: fold a thousand small herons out of paper and wish for something. After you finish the one thousandth one, it’ll come true. It’s only a story to keep children busy, I know, but at the same time it’s… kind of a nice thought…”

She returned to the paper in front of her, began folding another bird. The dragon king carefully approached her desk, waded through the flock of paper herons, trying his best not to injure any on his way. He retrieved a small stool from the corner of her room and sat down next to his sister, picking up a sheet of paper himself.

“I’ve read the same book in the past”, Kurthnaga explained, “and I wanted to believe that the legend is true so much. That was when first you and then Rajaion had left… the times were quite tense, I felt so very lonely and father was a lot more restless than he tried to appear on the outside, I’m sure of it. I hoped that if this legend has some truth to it, I could use it make the two of you come back home, so I folded paper after paper…”

Almedha tapped onto his half-folded sheet for a second and as Kurthnaga compared his folds to his sister’s, he realized a mistake in his work. It had been quite a while since he had done these the last time and while the young dragon was able to cover some of the holes in his memory by imitating what Almedha was doing, it seemed it wasn’t entirely the case.

“I don’t even remember how far I got”, he continued with a bit of a laugh, “but definitely not to a thousand. I… fell asleep pretty early into the whole endeavour…” 

Almedha commented the story with a little laugh, reached over to her brother to briefly ruffle his hair. It was a small gesture and normally Kurthnaga might have been not too happy about it, feeling she was still thinking of him as a child. Of course, nothing would ever change the fact that he was her younger brother, but he was growing. Maturing.   
He wasn’t a child anymore, he  _ couldn’t _ be a child anymore.  
He was a king now.

The two of them kept folding papers in silence for a while; it seemed like the princess had managed to perfect the technique of creating little herons already while Kurthnaga’s birds came out in all sorts of… interesting ways.  
But spending time like that was wonderfully relaxing, it let him almost forget the confusing stresses that awaited him in his life as the ruler of a nation. 

When a soft knock at the door brought both siblings out of their heron-folding concentration, Kurthnaga looked up to find himself bathed into the lights of the afternoon sun. He was almost shocked to realize how much time had already passed.  
The door opened and Ena slipped inside the room, stopping right at the door when she saw the flock of paper birds all across the floor. 

The young laguz woman smiled as her eyes met with those of the king and his sister.  
“So this is where you have been… The entire palace is looking for you, Kurthnaga.”

The black dragon offered his apologies, making everyone worry was certainly not what he had wanted to achieve.

“It’s understandable”, Ena smiled as she closed the door and began to make her way through the room. Her pregnancy was on full display now, it wasn’t long anymore until she would give birth to the late Rajaion’s child. The entire country was awaiting this event.  
Finally, she sat down on Almedha’s bed with a satisfied sigh, looked around once more.  
“It seems like the two of you have been rather busy today.”  
She picked up one of the tiny folded creatures, smiled as she examined it from all sides. This one was made by Almedha  – very obviously so, as it featured perfectly folded edges and a proudly raised neck. In comparison to these, Kurthnaga found his work rather looked like newborn hatchlings.

“Oh dear”, Kurthnaga’s sister suddenly exclaimed after watching Ena for a little while, “I didn’t realize we made so many of them. What in the world are we going to do with all of these?”  
“If I remember correctly, you can let them swim in water or fly”, the black dragon king offered, “but on the other hand…”  
He picked up one of his own creations and tried to make it glide through the air. Unsurprisingly to him, it wouldn’t get very far and crashed almost right in front of his feet. Maybe his sister’s would behave more elegantly once thrown, but at the same time it bared the question of why they would do it in the first place. They had no large body of water in the immediate vicinity to the palace either and decorating the interior with them was no option. Dheginsea would roll in his grave.

The last thing Kurthnaga wanted to do was to defile what his father had built up over centuries right before the latter’s birthday.

Ena turned the figure in her hands a few more times before she set it down and rose from the bed. Coming over to the desk, she was offered the comfortable chair that belonged to it and when she was seated again, the red dragon picked up another one of the herons. It was one of Kurthnaga’s this time, easily identifiable by the creaks caused from earlier misfolding. She met her king’s eyes.

“I think I have an idea. May I?”

He let her do whatever she wanted with it, his creations weren’t worth much of anything, anyway, and whatever the young woman wanted to do with it would surely lead to a better outcome than the paper’s current sorry state of existence.  
And so he and Almedha watched as Ena carefully unfolded the parchment until the paper lay flat on the desk and she was able to straighten it a few times before moving on to giving it new life. Her slim fingers swiftly folded the paper into new directions under the anticipative eyes of her king and his sister.  
When she was done, Ena presented something that looked a bit like small a paper bag to Kurthnaga, although she seemed to hold it the wrong way.

“We need a few more materials”, Ena explained, “but we can make these actually fly. I remember I created a ton of these as a child. Kind of similar to the paper herons, you’re supposed to make a wish while they rise into the sky, although I don’t think you need a whole thousand of them.”

For a little moment, Almedha’s eyes met her brother’s in silence and just when Kurthnaga thought his sister was skeptical of the whole endeavour, she nodded with a light smile on her face, asked what other materials Ena needed and swiftly ordered the first guard she found close to her chambers to bring as many as possible.  
It seemed almost a little childish to Kurthnaga to task the palace staff with something as trivial as gathering papercrafting materials, but Almedha would not be swayed. Something about this had piqued her interest, and Kurthnaga knew that she was hard to stop once his older sister had set her sights onto something. 

And so the three of them began working on transforming the paper birds all around them into something new while they waited for the rest of the materials to be delivered. Making these small bags was much easier and faster than folding the paper herons, that was for sure, and Kurthnaga found that the folds and creaks the paper maintained from its earlier form gave it quite the uniquely charming character. Once the rest of their working materials had arrived, Ena showed the royal siblings how to insert them into what they had already created, explained how to create a sturdy frame to hold the paper in place and where small candles would go. Even though Kurthnaga still was not entirely sure what the end result was meant to be, every step of the process gave a little more clarity. 

With a little sigh, Kurthnaga decided it was no use anymore pretending this was more than just something to ease his mind from his daily tasks and asked for tea and food to be brought that the three of them could enjoy while working on their little project. To his surprise, both women had become more relaxed and chatty over the course of the evening, sharing stories, laughs and even rumors. Memories of the ones they had lost along the way made their way into the conversations as well.   
Dheginsea would have never let them do this, Almedha claimed and Kurthnaga could do nothing but agree. However, the princess also shared the small, almost insignificant fact that the late Goldoan queen might have had words with her husband about that, as Kurthnaga’s sister revealed their mother had had a soft spot for crafting-related hobbies herself.  
The current dragon king had never heard about anything like that from his father. He was incredibly grateful Almedha had shared this information.

When the three laguz had completed turning every paper heron into something new, night had already fallen over Goldoa.

But this was fine. In fact, it was a perfect fit.

They hauled their small papercraft works through the endless corridors of the palace until they had decided on the perfect spot to initiate the next step in their endeavour. By now it had become perfectly clear to Kurthnaga what he had turned his paper birds into, had heard about the tradition of flying paper lanterns, but never participated in it himself.  
Together with Almedha and Ena, he stepped outside into the night on a balcony on one of the upper floors of the building, overseeing Goldoa and its vastness with a truly majestic view. Even in the middle of the night, the country presented itself proudly to its king and his family.  
The sky was rather cloudy tonight, but the full moon shone brightly enough to pierce the shadows at least a little. 

Nasir, Gareth and a few castle guards joined the three dragons on the balcony to assist them in lighting every small candle one by one. With the first lantern in hands, Kurthnaga stepped to the balustrade, holding out his creation. Now that it was lit up from the inside, the folds in the paper made for an even better decoration than he would have ever imagined, as the light showed the irregular surface in many different tones.

He let go of the lantern, gave it a little push and to his surprise, it really flew.

It rose towards the clouds, slowly but steadily, and the light wind pushed it away from the palace just a tiny bit faster.  
Almedha and Ena followed his start, lighting their lanterns and setting them free. One after the other, they were being handed lanterns that were ready to go, until a whole flock of them lit up the skies above them. They almost looked like tiny stars, Kurthnaga found, dancing through the air in relaxed, yet cheerful waves. Like a swarm of fireflies, some of them stuck together while others separated themselves from the crowd quickly.  
This display of twinkling lights was something Kurthnaga had never seen before in his life, and yet it held a strange fascination to him. It wasn’t just the beauty of the small sparkles against the darkened sky or how they seemed to have entered a race towards the moon, it was all the different ways in which these lanterns danced together or seemingly fought for room. 

They looked so alive.

Everyone around the king stared at the scenery in front of them in fascination, nobody dared to speak a word.  
Finally, Kurthnaga turned to his sister, who seemed unable to pry her eyes off the spectacle that had unfolded, as he remembered something Ena had mentioned earlier.

“What are you wishing for?”

Once again it took Almedha a moment to react to him, until she finally met his eyes with a smile.  
“It might not work if you reveal it to someone”, she whispered.

“It’s fine”, Nasir intervened from behind, “or that’s how the story goes anyway.”

When Almedha would only acknowledge this with a nod but no actual reveal, Kurthnaga’s interest was awakened. However, he found it surprisingly difficult trying to imagine what his sister would be wishing for in this day and age. Yet when he thought he had finally found the solution, he also couldn’t help but wonder why it had taken him so long coming up with it.  
“It’s him, right?”, he asked as gently as possible, “Soren.”  
His sister would only answer with a little laugh after she had long returned her gaze towards the sky, but that yearning smile of hers spoke more than a thousand words ever could.

After a few more moments where everyone just watched in silence, Almedha rose a hand and Kurthnaga almost feared she would go for another pat on his head, which, no matter the situation, was not something he wanted her to do in front of everyone. This was an intimate moment for sure, but he was still these people’s king.  
However, instead of what he had expected, the princess merely laid her hand on his shoulder, caressing it just a little.

“What about you?”

Noticing that he had not even thought of a wish himself yet, Kurthnaga observed the lanterns for another, long moment. A few of them seemed to have lost their steam and gradually sunk towards the earth while others still kept going higher and higher. Their waltz slowly dissolved and yet the display lost nothing of its fascination as these glimmering stars became smaller and smaller, looking more like real stars that had fallen to earth with every second. They bumped into each other, pushed others into different directions, rose higher, then fell again, just to catch another gust of wind to ride towards the heavens.  
Yes, they truly seemed alive.

“I want this peace to maintain for as long as possible”, he finally said after a little sigh. “Everyone fought so hard to reach it, after all.”

His wish was met with applause from the palace staff behind him, turned to find that everyone else gave their approval of his wish as well. But there was something else on his mind that he wanted to voice.

“Let’s make this a tradition”, he proposed, “every year on this very night.”

His suggestion was met with some mild confusion at first and especially Nasir seemed skeptical.  
“Quite honestly, your majesty, I’m not entirely sure if he would care about that. In fact…”  
The white dragon trailed off for a moment, seemed lost in thoughts just a bit. When he faced his king again, the light frown on his forehead smoothened and made way for a confident smile on his lips.  
“Actually, no, I’m sure he would care after all. He would be very proud to know that his children still hold him in such high regards after everything that happened.”

The others around him nodded their approval, and while Kurthnaga wasn’t entirely sure if it was for his idea or Nasir’s statement, he was happy nonetheless, and determined to make this proposal a reality. He’d have to thank Ena for her instructions later.

Once again, the new king of Goldoa turned to see how the flying lanterns slowly disappeared into the darkness, some to the ground below while others were already too far off in the distance to properly see them. But no matter where they were, their lights shone on throw the darkness, hopefully delighting other Goldoans that were still awake, or travellers that made their ways through the finally opened country.  
He wished those lights could guide someone as much as he wished to guide his fellow Goldoans himself  – in a different fashion than his father had, but hopefully in a way that would make him proud. They had always had the same goal after all: ensuring the safety of all people of Tellius.

Maybe, Kurthnaga thought, these lights could become a message to the late king, an annual sign that the world was at peace.

But for now, he could only watch as the paper stars faded away while he gently whispered into the night.

“Happy birthday, father.”

  
  



End file.
